I watched her try to discern whether I was being sarcastic. I wasn’t. “You’ll never make it big with shampoo. You know that?”
“I’m counting on it,” I replied.
She never understood me. That was fine.
I did show my face eventually, of course. In a commercial, you smile for the camera, then turn, raising your arm and letting your hair run over it. “You look good,” one director said to me, “but you’re not warm. Try for warm.”
In Central Park, no one cared if I was warm.
So when I came back to New York after my siblings and I killed Sister, and I started looking for a new apartment, it made sense that I ended up on 107th, with the park outside my window. The elderly landlady warned me that the park had a lot of “those people.” I didn’t care. When I saw the joggers, the dog walkers, and the creeps going about their business, this was the first place I’d lived that felt like home to me, even with the banging radiators and the crooked bathroom door that you had to force closed. It felt like I belonged here, like it was mine.
That was the first change I made. The second change came when my agent learned that I was back in town. She called me, and partway through her shouted lecture, I hung up. I never called her again, and from the moment I hung up that phone, I never again thought about whether my hands were pale enough or what the size of my calves was.
The third thing I did was by far the hardest.
First, I had to track down Nadia, my fellow model, and ask her where she lived. Then I went to her building and stood outside. I tried to look casual, as if I was expecting a friend to come out any minute. People bought it. It helped that models lived there, so I looked like I belonged.
I didn’t see the person I wanted, so eventually I chatted up a nosy neighbor and found out where he worked. Fifteen minutes later, I walked into a record store on Lower Broadway. The bell above the door jingled.
Ethan looked up from where he was standing behind the counter. When he saw me, he went very still. “Dodie?”
I cleared my throat. “Hello, Ethan.”
He blinked, then looked around, as if panicked. A man with a graying ponytail was browsing records in one corner. A kid in a ball cap was pocketing his change and leaving, brushing past me to get out the door.
“You’re back in town,” Ethan said.
“I am.” I let my gaze take in his tall frame, his dark tousled hair, his glasses. The flush on his cheeks. I shoved my hands into the pockets of my belted wool coat. “You work here.”
“I’m the manager.” Immediately, he pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes, his cheeks going more fiery red. “Oh, God, that sounded bad.”
I smiled. The man with the ponytail paused his browsing and glanced at us.
“You have my number,” Ethan said when he dropped his hand. “You could have called.”
“I wanted to see what you do for a living,” I replied. “The truth this time. And I think…I wanted you to see my face. A phone call wouldn’t do.”
“So you tracked me down?” he asked. “Why?”
I was sweating under my coat. I was so nervous that I clenched my hands into fists inside my pockets and reminded myself to breathe. I’d never been this terrified in my life, and that included the moment that Anne Whitten’s murderous ghost pulled me under black water, her bony hands dragging me down.
I hadn’t thought I would get this next chapter, but I had beenwrong. I hadn’t died in that basement, the same place Ben had died, with Sister pushing me down. I’d walked out of there instead. This was my chapter, and I planned to take it.
The ponytail man was listening avidly, his eyebrows rising. Good for him.
“I want to know if you’ll go on a date with me,” I said to Ethan.
“A second date?” he asked, surprised.
“Yes, a second date.”
Our gazes caught, and I didn’t know what he saw, but slowly, he relaxed. His shoulders lowered. The panic left his face. His cheeks were still a little red, but he smiled.
“I’m happy to see you,” he said softly.
“I’m happy to see you, too.” I meant it.
We looked at each other for another long moment. Maybe this would work, and maybe it wouldn’t. There was no way to know, but I was going to try. Not because I needed to or because I was supposed to. Because Iwantedto. I wasn’t used to wanting things, to hoping for them. Apparently, it started now. In this chapter, I was a woman who had things to do.
